room.
Palmer pressed the door-release button and accepted the message slip from a Foreign Office messenger. Looking up, Palmer said: “It’s just been announced in Moscow that one of the two heart-attack victims from the tourist group has died.”
After its productive start, Charlie’s day went downhill. He’d spent a frustrating forenoon failing to reach Natalia and too much of the early afternoon unable to reconnect with David Halliday to learn of a reaction to his approaching Patrick Wilkinson.
Long before the clumsy Russian entry into his Vauxhall flat, Charlie acknowledged the onion-skin overlap of espionage and burglary, the cardinal credo of both being always to establish a guaranteed exit before contemplating an entry, which required the utmost preparation for the following day’s Metro merry-go-round with Wilkinson, which he hoped would be as successful as his London evasion of his original safe-house guardians. Smolenskaya was the station closest to the Moskva-bordering British embassy and the logical place for Wilkinson to set off. To guard against his expectation of Wilkinson’s not being alone, Charlie spent a full thirty minutes refamiliarizing himself with the station layout and hideaway surveillance spots. He twice rode his chosen route and following that refamiliarization disembarked at each of the linked intersections to memorize their individual geography. At four randomly chosen stops Charlie interrupted his protective survey to return to ground level for still unsuccessful telephone attempts. It took Charlie three hours to complete his personal mapping and isolate the best-suited stations. Charlie finished at Smolenskaya with the last of the continuous tests he’d risked during the journey testing the recharged British-adapted Russian mobile that was to feature heavily the following day, knowing the replacement Russian pay-as-you-go devices wouldn’t operate at the depths of the Moscow underground system. He moved as deeply into the station as possible, impressed as he had been every previous time that the phone’s indicator showed a full battery. As soon as he’d proved its effectiveness Charlie once more removed the battery to defeat the suspected tracker application.
It was past six before Natalia eventually answered and from the obvious terseness Charlie knew at once she was not alone. He named the time and restaurant, in the university district, quickly enough for her to dismiss the call as misdialed as she disconnected. Charlie tried from the same kiosk and twice more from others during his next reconnaissance before accepting that Halliday’s refusal was deliberate, which was irritating although predictable. Charlie wondered how difficult it would be to restore their situation. It depended, he supposed, on London’s response to his reappearance and insisted separation from MI6. To get an indication of that he’d have to wait until he met Wilkinson:
There had been, as always, a professional practicality in Charlie’s booking dinner that night at the Wild Egret. It had been a favorite of both at the beginning of their marriage, conveniently close to their prerevolutionary- mansion apartment, the nostalgia of which he hoped she’d appreciate as much as she had his earlier choice. He enjoyed the nostalgic significance, too, but equally important was its nearness to the multientranced warren of Kurskaya Metro station, from which he planned to leave the Wilkinson carousel. He studied that as intently as he had Smolenskaya, going in and out of all three entrances, marking every concealment and vantage point and back once more aboveground rediscovered the tributary streets to the treble-lane highways and connecting ring road. Gratefully approaching the end of his professional preparations, Charlie sought out a half-remembered landmark that he found closer to the Wild Egret than he’d recalled, slipping easily into the alcove’s completely dark interior. It had once contained a horse-watering trough, now removed but still with a wide ledge remaining for Charlie to perch on to relieve the foot-burning discomfort after so much walking, refusing even to contemplate how much worse it would be the following day. Charlie picked out Natalia when she was still more than a hundred meters away, approaching from the direction of the Kurskaya station, and was at once caught by the caution she was showing, discreetly checking her trail twice before reaching a cross-street intersection where she hesitated longer to ensure she was not under parallel road surveillance. He couldn’t detect any either but waited a full five minutes to make absolutely sure Natalia was alone before he left the alcove to follow.
She was being seated as he entered. She smiled up as he joined her and said: “So you were checking I didn’t have unwanted company?”
“The alcove where the trough used to be: you were very good.”
“I was trying to impress you.”
“You knew I’d be watching?”
“As I expected you’d choose this restaurant.”
“Let’s hope it lives up to the memories.”
They took their time ordering, Charlie insisting upon celebration beluga.
“Was my call a problem?” asked Charlie.
Natalia shook her head. “We’d finished but I was still in the building, with people around. I had it on mute, so no one heard it.”
“You dumped the phone?”
“After removing the SIM card and the battery,” said Natalia, smiling at the insistence. “And I didn’t dispose of them in the same bins.”
Charlie smiled back at the gentle rebuke. “So how was your first day?”
Natalia sipped her wine, considering her reply. “Not what I expected: not that I knew exactly
Did she want a matching contribution with what she was disclosing or was it just a point of comparison? Charlie waited for them to be served before saying: “It’s universal, isn’t it?”
Natalia nodded. “That’s how we have to work. When we come to any outside name with whom Radtsic’s ever had unsupervised contact, particularly British, we’ve got to flag it as well as verbally announcing it around the table for further recognition if the name appears in someone else’s separated document batch.”
“How thick is each individual batch?”
“About a third of a meter.”
“Have you a better idea of how many other groups there are, apart from yours?”
“Approximately a dozen, as far as I can establish. But there’s an equal number, starting tomorrow, to refine the initial results. The lunchtime rumor was that at that stage the flagged names will transfer to computer analysis and comparison.”
“Is that all you have to flag up, Western-particularly British-identities?”
Natalia shook her head. “Repetitive destinations and locations, again concentrated on the West. Vacation spots, stuff like that.”
“The checking and cross-checking will take months,” estimated Charlie.
“I know.”
“How much cross-referencing did your particular group assemble today?”
“Twelve at the end of the day.”
Natalia was talking on the turned spy’s psychological profile, Charlie recognized: once the initial dyke breaches, the tidal wave of disclosures follows. “The analysis won’t take months. It’ll take years, even computerized.”
“How long it’ll take isn’t the point,” said Natalia. “It’s the documentation itself.”
“What about it?” Charlie frowned.
“It’s all duplicated, no originals, although from its font and typeface it was created on a typewriter, not a computer.”
“Just your duplicates or everybody’s?” queried Charlie.
“Everybody’s. Do you understand my point?”
“Elana and Andrei Radtsic were detained less than forty-eight hours ago,” calculated Charlie. “Allowing a generous twelve for the connection to be established between Paris and Moscow, that gives thirty-six hours for the Kremlin to discover Radtsic had gone. What’s your estimate of Radtsic’s combined KGB and FSB service?”
“Nearly thirty years,” responded Natalia, at once.
“We’ve no way of knowing if
